For those who are home, and for those who are on the way. For those who support the historic and just return of the land of Israel to its people, forever loyal to their inheritance, and its restoration.

Tuesday, July 31, 2012

I have a piece in the New York Post today that suggests only a liar or an insane person would deny that Israel benefits from a political culture far healthier than the corrupted and diseased culture of the Palestinian polities. You can read it here. Mitt Romney pointed out the wild disparity in GDP in the areas controlled by the Palestinians and those under Israeli dominion. Someone on Twitter commented that Israel is a “welfare state” living off the U.S. and we should see what would happen if it were cut off.

Well, let’s see. U.S. aid to Israel has remained steady around $3 billion a year since the signing of the Camp David Accords in 1979. It was set that high in part because Israel surrendered functional oil fields to Egypt when it gave back the Sinai and lost a significant source of income. In 1980, that aid was enormously important to Israel’s general health. It constituted something like one-seventh of the nation’s overall GDP ($22.8 billion). Flash forward to 2011. Israel’s GDP was $245 billion. U.S. aid constituted 1/81st of Israel’s GDP.

What’s more, almost all that aid is in the form of military assistance, much of it in the form of support for Israel’s Iron Dome missile-defense efforts, which have direct R&D implications for the United States. In other words, Israel is testing, under real-world conditions, equipment the U.S. may need to use later.

It’s truly amazing just how far The Guardian can go when it comes to blaming Israel. Angela Taylor takes a look at the status of women in Gaza and carries out some interviews:

“Before the blockade, my husband used to make good money working in Israel,” she says. “With the blockade, that all stopped. When he can’t find any work and we have nothing to eat, he blames me. He is a like a crazy animal. I stay quiet when he hits me. Afterwards, he cries and says, if he had a job, he wouldn’t beat me.”

It is five years since Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip and Israel tightened its siege of the territory. Many men became jobless overnight and it is women who have ended up bearing the brunt of their husbands’ frustration.

So let’s get this straight – Israel is the reason that Palestinian men beat their wives.

Maybe The Guardian’s journalist might like to consider that violence against women might very well be a by-product of a society that glorifies violence and terrorism, where children can spend their summers learning jihadi skills at Hamas sleepaway camps.

Ten years ago today, on July 31st, 2002, Palestinian terrorists planted a devastating bomb in Hebrew University's Frank Sinatra Cafeteria. Numerous students and faculty were murdered in the attack, including several Americans. The attack was perpetrated by terrorists who had received funding, resources and safe haven from the Palestinian Authority (PA). Although the bomb maker, the arch-terrorist Abdullah Barghouti, was being hunted by Israel, he was hidden in a safe house by PA officials after they had released him from jail. The PA continued to assist Barghouti to remain free.

We brought suit against the PA and PLO for their role in aiding and abetting the Hebrew University cafeteria bombing. This month, we sought to take the deposition of Abdullah Barghouti who is serving multiple life sentences in an Israeli prison. After cursing at the other lawyers and myself, Barghouti refused to answer our questions, even after we had the Jerusalem Court order him to testify. Nonetheless, we decided to press on with the case against the Palestinian Authority and the PLO without Barghouti's testimony.

Yup, there you have it - the true nature of the Olympics has come out within the first two days. The Lebanese refused to train next to the Israeli team. The Olympics Committee quickly capitulated - and put up screens lest the Lebanese be forced to continue seeing the Israeli team.

Of course, the IOC will now have to explain how this isn't politics - but then again, they should have no problems twisting lies and deception into their own unique type of reality. After all, after steadfastly refusing to honor the eleven Israeli athletes murdered at their Olympic games, on their watch, because of their failed security - they did allow a moment of silence for the London terror victims of July 7, 2005. Please don't misunderstand - I don't have a problem with the city of London remembering their own; I just find it grossly hypocritical that in that moment of silence, no one could think to dedicate it to someone else's victims of terror.

It could have been a moment for all victims of terror; it could have been. It should have been. But it wasn't. And according to the son of one of the Israeli victims, the International Olympic Committee had the nerve to tell the Israeli families that if they were to give a moment to the Israeli dead, they would have to likewise give a moment to the Palestinians who died at the Olympics games - to be fair of course.

An update on the continuing indiscriminate fire by the Gazan terrorists on Israel and Israelis. In the past fifteen minutes (it's now 1:20pm on a hot Tuesday afternoon) we have gotten reports of two rockets crashing into southern Israel and exploding not far from the border with the Gaza Strip. The rockets were of course fired from the Gaza Strip by any of an almost limitless list of real and imaginary groups, subgroups and sub-sub groups of the Gazan Palestinian Arab terror conglomerate. The Tzeva Adom incoming missile warning system began sounding at 1:00pm.

We suspect these rockets are intended as retaliation by yesterday's outrage: the facilitation by Israel's military of 251 delivery trucks carrying more than 6,100 tons of goods into Hamas-controlled Gaza, including a ton of veterinary drugs. During the week just ended, more than 735,000 liters of heavy-duty diesel fuel for Gaza's power plant were admitted via COGAT [details here]. COGAT is almost never mentioned in news reports - it's the arm of the Israeli military that serves to co-ordinate civilian issues among Israel and the Israel Defense Forces on one hand; the multitude of interested international organizations and diplomats on the second hand; and the Palestinian Authority and its Gaza equivalent on the third hand.

Thousands of tons of goods arriving by road from Israel: no flotilla, no tunnels, no sniper cover. The insult to the Palestinian Arab pride of Gaza's population is understandably more than a normal person can bear.

The annual Herzog College Bible study seminar at Yeshivat Har Etzion in Alon Shvut – attended last week by over 6,000 men and women, young and old, religious and secular — is a magnificent enterprise, an intellectual treat, and an exhilarating spiritual experience. Too bad it gets no media coverage.

The Israeli press regularly ignores this uplifting event, year after year. The military censor herself couldn’t have done a better job of blocking news of the conference. Why? Probably because Israeli journalists are embarrassed by the Bible’s popularity. They’re petrified that so many people feel that the Bible is relevant.

The Herzog College Bible studies seminar (Yemei HaIyun BeTanach) was founded 20 years ago by its parent institution, the Har Etzion hesder yeshiva in Alon Shvut. The seminar offers a choice of 200 lectures across five days, ranging from Biblical archaeology to hermeneutics, linguistics, poetry, prophecy, politics, theology, history, geography, translation, cosmology and creationism, mysticism, midrash, and law, covering all 24 books of the Bible.

The classes are both academic and traditional, incorporating twenty-first century scholarship and Talmudic interpretation, creative readings alongside conventional approaches. Dozens of books with contemporary analysis of the Bible are published every year by the College. The lecture days are nearly always sold out, as is an additional day of Biblical field tours.

Herzog College lecturers are yeshiva deans and university professors, men and women, scholarly giants such as Rabbis Yoel Bin Nun, Yaakov Medan, Elhanan Samet and Menachem Liebtag – who have birthed the critical study of Bible within the yeshiva world – along with academic stars like Professors Uriel Simon, Amos Frisch, Yonatan Grossman, and Yael Ziegler.

Will Zionists ever learn how much Arabs hate Israel?
My favorite Zionist delusion is the notion that the Arab people don’t hate Israel but that the Arab governments incite the people to hate Israel, when it is the other way round. “London 2012 organising committee officials erected a makeshift curtain to split the two halves of a training gym at the ExCeL centre on Friday afternoon to placate the Lebanese team, which was refusing to train at the same time as the Israelis.” – As’ad (“Angry Arab”) Abu Khalil

I had intended to write about why so many peace projects — Oslo, the treaty with Egypt, improving relations with Turkey, etc. — have foundered on the rocks of Arab and Muslim hatred for Jews and Israel. I had planned to illustrate it with Mr. Angry Arab’s remark, as well as the video of Egyptian celebrities exploding in paroxysms of rage in the presence of pretend ‘Israelis’.

But the more I looked at Abu Khalil’s remarks, the more I realized that I agree with him about so many things! I thought it would be interesting to point this out.

Not Israel — he hates it and hates Zionism. I’m a Zionist and I love Israel. So we have an issue there.

On Friday, July 27, prior to the official opening of the 2012 London Olympic Games, the Lebanese judo team refused to practice next to the Israeli team and Olympic organizers erected a barrier to split the gym in half.

According to a spokesman for Israel's Olympic Committee, "We started to practice. They came and they saw us - they didn't like it and they went to the organizers." (Reuters)

The organizers promptly accommodated the Lebanese demand and set up the separation screen.

According to several Hebrew sports sites, the two teams were scheduled to use the same gym and mats at London's new ExCeL center for their final preparations. However, the delegation from Lebanon would not train in view of the Israeli team, and insisted some sort of barrier be placed between them.

Romney has landed in Jerusalem and Obama is threatening to visit Israel in his second term. This seems like good news for Americans, but presidential and pre-presidential visits are often bad news for Israelis.

Romney's trip itinerary covering the UK, Israel and Poland is a clever road map critique of Obama's foreign policy. Kerry and Obama both campaigned on a promise to fix America's broken relations with its allies. Romney is subtly doing the same thing, paying a visit to allies alienated by the last three years.

When Obama first visited Israel the contentious Democratic primaries had just wrapped up and Jewish voters and organizations had thrown their support to Hillary Clinton. Obama had Jewish leftists, but he didn't have more middle-of-the-road Jewish Democrats. And additionally paying a visit to the home of the Little Satan was a way of dispelling suspicions about his Muslim roots.

Obama hasn't bothered with a visit to Israel, but he hasn't bothered appearing in person at the NAACP either. And that's all for the best. Israel needs a visit from Obama about as much as it needs more of the "mysterious fires" being set as part of the Arson Jihad.

A presidential visit to most other countries is a formality while a presidential visit to Israel is an unpleasantness. Presidents who visit Israel must also stop off for a visit with the terrorist leaders. Presidents don't just stop by, have a pita, smell the flowers and do some handshakes. Instead they arrive tasked with peacemaking duties and then they task everyone else with their peacemaking.

A woman who played a major role in personalizing the battle for the release of Soviet Jews in the 1970s is now in the midst of her own battle — for the kidney transplant to save her life.

Beginning in the early 1970s, Enid Wurtman, now 70, became involved with the cause of Soviet Jewry, working on publicity, fund-raising and political activism from her home in Philadelphia. She is credited with putting a face to each refusenik’s story in a way that galvanized greater Jewish support. After moving with her family to Israel in 1977, Wurtman continued to work with immigrants from the former Soviet Union and does so to this day.

However, in 2010, Wurtman’s own campaign began when she was diagnosed with kidney failure. Her health has been in decline ever since and now Wurtman desperately requires a kidney transplant.

In June, she found the person who might save her. An altruistic Israeli donor came forward, but there are still multiple obstacles ahead before the transplant can be finalized. She is now in the midst of a two- to three-month waiting period; the donor must pass numerous tests and the transplant still requires approval from the National Kidney Board, Wurtman said.

While waiting for a kidney, Wurtman, now a grandmother of six, continues to charge ahead with her life’s work.

It all began in 1973 when she and her husband Stuart went on what was meant to be a leisurely Russian getaway. Instead of relaxation, they underwent a transformation, Wurtman said, when they encountered Jewish would-be emigrants trapped in the USSR.

Wurtman was a social worker living with Stuart and two small children in Philadelphia. After meeting the brave “Prisoners of Zion” on the streets of Leningrad and Moscow, Wurtman and her husband, who died this April, devoted themselves to raising awareness and support on behalf of their new friends.

At that time, the refusenik movement barely existed, Wurtman said. According to her son Elie, his parents’ active campaign on behalf of Soviet Jewry sparked the North American Jewish community into action. “My mom lived every day of her life speaking, organizing and bringing in more activists,” he recalls.

The Wurtmans created an organization in Philadelphia for Soviet Jewry and formed “adopt-a-family” committees with individuals, synagogues and organizations.

Elie attributes his mother’s success to her modest but passionate presentation of the Soviet plight. “She would tell the story of each person, building personal relationships between them and North American communities. All of a sudden, each refusenik was a hero with a name and a face that people could relate to,” he says.

Candid Camera-like pranks can be more telling than they might be funny. Egypt’s Al-Nahar TV featured separate interviews with three popular actors – two men and one woman – who were each told at some point that their appearances were being screened on Israel’s Channel 2. That alone sufficed to trigger violence and/or vituperation.

It matters little whether each of the three was genuinely outraged or just thought it prudent to defend his/her reputation from any possible perceived Israeli contamination. The remotest and most indirect connection to Israel was presented as justifying fury.

Actor Ayman “Tuhami” Kandeel, believing his female interviewer was Israeli, began punching her, knocked her to the ground and proceeded to hurl furniture at the technical crew.

Fellow actor Mahmoud Abdel Ghaffar slapped the interviewer and shook her fiercely before being assured that “we’re all Egyptians here.” He excused himself: “You brought me someone who looks like a Jew. I hate the Jews to death.”

The aggression of actress Mayer El Beblawi was verbal and dripped with Jew-revulsion: “Israelis are all liars. They moan about the Holocaust, or whatever it’s called. They murdered the prophets. Allah hadn’t cursed worms and moths as much as he cursed the Jews.”

This is but one of numerous illustrations of the nature of the New Egypt, the one forged by a so-called Arab Spring.

The chronology below picks up from our previous posting of Tuesday, July 24, 2012 [here]. Both are based on information received via on the Tayar Security Report, as edited and annotated by us. Yehudit Tayar creates her invaluable bulletins from first-responder, police and army reports.

Thursday, July 26, 2012

- Near Bet Umar and Halhul on the Gush Etzion-Hebron road: Local Arabs launch a rock-throwing attack on an IDF patrol and on civilian vehicles
- The Jewish community of Hebron: Palestinian Arabs attack IDF soldiers and Jewish civilians with cement blocks. In the city’s Avraham Avinu quarter, soldiers manning an IDF post come under cement block attack by Arabs

Friday, July 27, 2012

- Tel Romeida: A Jewish resident of Hebron came under attack by Arabs when he went to immerse himself in the ancient ritual bath of the Tel Romeida Spring. [Similar circumstances to those of the July 19 attack we reported here – it happened again.]

There is a strong case for a claim that the Fatah-led Palestinian national movement, as we have known it from the late 1960s onward, is fading from the scene.

While in practical terms the Palestinian national movement is an increasing irrelevance, the symbolic cause of Palestine nevertheless retains great emotional appeal both for the Muslim world as a whole and for a wide spectrum of Western leftists. The result: a new, loose, global, Islamist-led movement is emerging in its stead to carry the Palestinian banner.

The failed peace process of the 1990s indicated the central dilemma for the Palestinian national movement. It was not strong enough to achieve its maximum goal of destroying what it regarded as the illegitimate state of Israel. At the same time, with the defeat of Zionism at the very center of its worldview, it proved incapable of making the compromises necessary for a peaceful partition of the disputed area.
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Following Yasir Arafat’s death in 2004, the Palestinian unity which he had created and bequeathed to his people did not long survive. The 2007 split between Arafat’s Fatah and the Palestinian Islamists of Hamas now has the look of permanence about it.

Hamas is entrenched in its semi-sovereign Gaza fiefdom. As a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, its natural partner in the neighborhood is the Muslim Brotherhood ascendancy in adjacent Egypt, rather than its Ramallah-based secular rivals.

As for Fatah, it is the local representative of the rotting secular Arab nationalist movements and regimes which are currently being eclipsed.

The Christian Science Monitor will not be deterred. While most media outlets have sensibly moved on from the Gaza blockade story, given that Israel now allows in virtually everything aside from weapons, the CSM presses on with the overreported, frequently misreported, and now, anachronistic, story. Ruqaya Izzidien, who earlier displayed her talents in the English Web site of the Muslim Brotherhood, debuts in the CSM with her piece "Under Israeli blockade of Gaza, books are a rare, cherished commodity." The subheading is: "Israel does not explicitly ban importing books to Gaza, but the blockade makes it extraordinarily difficult to do so. The shortage amounts to a kind of censorship, Gazans say." The lengthy article begins:

The Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip has been blamed for a multitude of problems facing the population there: malnutrition, unemployment, limited access to electricity and potable water.

Gazan students and educators say that under the Israeli-imposed siege, education is suffering too. The blockade makes it so difficult to bring in books that they are forced to resort to bootlegging and smuggling, they say. The limited supply of original books has driven up costs, making them difficult for most Gazans to afford.

But Izzidien doesn't. For her, it's enough to say that Israel was blamed. The merit of the outdated accusations are not particularly of any concern to her.

And she then attempts to breathe new life into the old blockade story with the accusation that under "the Israeli-imposed siege" (but not the Egyptian-imposed siege) "education is suffering" and the "blockade makes it so difficult to bring in books. . . ."

In the weeks and months prior to the opening ceremonies of the Olympic Games, the organizers and the International Olympics Committee were adamant in insisting that there was no time during the event for a single moment of silence for the victims of the 1972 Munich massacre. The 40th anniversary of the terrorist violence that disrupted the sports extravaganza went unmarked during the worldwide television show except for the courageous decision of American broadcaster Bob Costas, who silenced his microphone for five seconds in honor of the Munich victims. But as it turned out, those who produced the opening ceremonies were not opposed to commemorating the victims of terrorist violence, just to remembering Israeli victims. The official program included a nearly six-minute long choreographed commemoration of the July 7, 2005 London bombings.

The excuse for this is that the terrorist assault on London by four Islamist bombers took place 24 hours after the announcement that London would be the host of the 2012 Olympics and is thus associated in the minds of the British with the Games. Fair enough. Those attacks that took the lives of 52 people deserve to be remembered, as do those of other terrorist attacks by Islamists around the globe. But the juxtaposition of the tribute to those victims with the absolute refusal of the organizers to devote a moment to the memory of an event that is far more closely tied to the Olympics was both shocking and indecent. While there were those who speculated that prejudice against Jews and Israelis was at the heart of the IOC’s decision prior to Friday, the surprising inclusion of the 7/7 attacks as a major element in the ceremony confirms that this was the case. The only possible conclusion to be drawn from this is that the Olympic movement considers Jewish blood shed by terrorists at an Olympics to be somehow less significant than that of other victims.

In the wake of last week’s terror attack against Israeli civilians in Bulgaria, the European Union has refused Israel’s request to blacklist Hezbollah as a terror group, citing a lack of “tangible evidence” it was engaged in terrorism.

The attack, which claimed the lives of five Israelis and a local Bulgarian man, has been widely attributed to Hezbollah and the Iranian regime, under whose orders it was carried out.

In an interview on Fox News this past Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said, Israel knows "with absolute certainty, without a shred of doubt, that this was a Hezbollah operation," citing it had “rock solid evidence” the terror group was responsible.

To rub further salt in the wound of the dead Israelis and hundreds of other innocent people who have died at the hands of Hezabollah since the 1980s, Cypriot Foreign Minister Erato Kozakou-Marcoullis, whose country currently holds the rotating EU presidency, added that Hezbollah is “an organization that comprises a political party and a social services network as well as an armed wing.”

Perhaps the EU thinks that Hezbollah is running a soup kitchen out of Beirut?

Given the EU has said it would require more “tangible evidence” that Hezbollah was engaging in terrorism, how about this (for a start):

A recent AP piece tells us that the CIA considers Israel its “number one counterintelligence threat” in the Middle East.

The CIA considers Israel its No. 1 counterintelligence threat in the agency’s Near East Division, the group that oversees spying across the Middle East, according to current and former officials. Counterintelligence is the art of protecting national secrets from spies. This means the CIA believes that U.S. national secrets are safer from other Middle Eastern governments than from Israel.

The article describes several incidents illustrative of the mistrust between the intelligence agencies of the two nations, including of course the cases of Jonathan Pollard and Ben-Ami Kadish.

One wonders why this article appears now. Did the story idea suddenly pop into the heads of the AP writers? I don’t think so. Someone at the CIA decided to stick it to Israel today, when Mitt Romney is going around (correctly, in my opinion) criticizing the Obama Administration for tilting against Israel.

The piece strains mightily to find an example of a case in which Israeli spying actually damaged US interests (at least, interests that the CIA is willing to publicly admit). The best it can do is point to a Syrian scientist who was working for the CIA who might have been caught because of an Israeli leak.

Sunday, July 29, 2012

The Palestinians face an economic crisis more severe than the World Bank had anticipated; the Bank fears that the territories may become "ungovernable." This is not actually new, but since the Bank in its panic is considering bypassing restrictions on money to Hamas, it is worth looking at the roots of the "crisis."

The Palestinian Authority's 2012 budget -- produced by PM Salam Fayyad, the West's "go-to man" for economic decision-making -- was a fantasy. It called for $3.5 billion in spending, including $1.1 billion in aid, and showed a deficit of between $750 million and $1.1 billion. The latter has proven to be closer to the truth. The Palestinian economy was expected to generate about $1.3 billion, and the PA planned to spend three times that. (By comparison, Vermont, the smallest generator among U.S. states, produced about $26 billion last year.) U.S. aid ($513 million, not including security assistance) was expected to cover about 20% of actual PA spending, with the Europeans kicking in another 20%.

With planning like that, who could be surprised by a $200-million cash shortage?

The World Bank blames the world economy and Israel. It does not find fault with Palestinian corruption, an outsized security force, an oversized bureaucracy, an overreliance on other people's money, or the failure to find things to do that produce income. It declines to consider whether the ongoing Palestinian war against Israel has had an impact on the Palestinian economy.

In the world of Jewish memories and experience, this time of year has an especially stressful character. It’s a very hot Friday here in Jerusalem at this moment. The Sabbath will settle in as the sun sets, and the following 25 or so hours of disconnect from the surrounding world, always welcome, will be especially so because of what follows it on Saturday night: the observance of the ninth day of Av.

Av is a difficult month for people who live by the traditional Jewish calendar. The ninth day of Av is when the Babylonians destroyed the one-and-only Jewish temple in Jerusalem, bringing an end to independent Jewish life in what we call Israel today and killing some 100,000 Jews while exiling almost all the others. Some 640 years later, in the year 70, it was the turn of the Roman empire to conquer Israel and for the second time the rebuilt Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed. This time, some two million Jews were killed; a million more went into an exile that lasted many centuries. An independent Jewish nation in its own land did not arise again until the establishment of modern Israel 64 years ago.

Av the ninth is marked by a sunset-to-sunset absolute fast that begins this coming Saturday night. There are mournful prayers, deliberate physical discomfort and a great deal of personal and community introspection. Beyond the ancient history aspects, the same date has been associated with some of the Jewish people’s blackest moments: on this day, the entire Jewish community of Spain was expelled in the fateful year 1492. On this day in 1942 in the city of Warsaw - one-third of whose entire population was Jewish at the time - the Nazi Germans began to liquidate the ghetto and send its inhabitants to their deaths in the Treblinka factory of death.

Once the ninth of Av is safely behind us, the rest of the summer for most religiously observant Jews gets easier and more enjoyable. The relaxation doesn’t quite reach our family, unfortunately. In 2001, our eldest daughter Malki, 15, was killed in a Hamas terrorist outrage in the center of Jerusalem. Even as most Jews breathe a sigh of relief with the end of the fast (this year, that means this coming Sunday night) we prepare ourselves for the annual pilgrimage to her grave and the public commemoration of the anniversary (called the azkara in Hebrew) of her murder.

We feel indescribable pain, but we are not morose or neutralized. We’re terribly sad, even overwhelmed by the feeling of loss. But we have full and constructive lives to live.

My family went to synagogue to read Eicha (Lamentations). The Jewish people have plenty over which to lament - from the first major Tisha B'Av disaster (the sin of the spies in the desert) up through the destructions of the Holy Temples, the Spanish Inquisition, and most recently the Destruction of Gush Katif and Northern Shomron and the Expulsion of Jews from their homes.

On my way to sleep, I decided to check the news. Nothing special. IDF Home Front Command's Search and Rescue soldiers are training for chemical warfare. Opposition leader Shaul Mofaz said that attacking Iran could be catastrophic for Israel. The CIA says Israel is breaking into the homes of CIA agents in Israel. Republican Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney has landed in Israel.
Regular day of news.

Then I saw a message from my niece. "On Tisha B'Av, remember the destruction of Gush Katif. Watch this movie - UNSETTLED - Documentary on the Disengagement from Gaza."(Click here)

Looking at the Expulsion from the eyes of settler, soldier and politician, it is done in such a true-life human manner without anyone banging your head with messages, it doesn't seem like a documentary.Up-close, personal, compelling, excellent! Directed by Joel Blasberg and Oreet Rees, produced by Arnold Peltz and Joel Blasberg, it is also magnificently filmed and edited.

In addition to the interviews done with the subjects of the documentary, the film brings us right up close to the interactions between soldier and settler at the moment of the Expulsion. We hear their dialogue, their thought processes, their reasoning, their arguing.

"It will be fine," the soldiers told the sobbing residents of Gush Katif as their were being thrown out of their homes. "It will be fine."

This Tisha B'Av, as hundreds of thousands of Jews around the world mourn the tragedies that have befallen them throughout history, we are reminded of the heart wrenching episode the State of Israel underwent seven years ago - the disengagement from Gaza. The 90 minute film, UNSETTLED, offers a personal behind-the-scenes look, both before and during the evacuation, at the people whose lives would forever be impacted by the events which unfolded during those difficult weeks.

With the ramifications of the disengagement from Gaza still very evident today, this emotional documentary film takes you back to experience the event from the perspective of both the settler and the soldier.

(While originally published on Tisha B'Av 3 years ago, Nadav Shragai's piece remains ever relevant, awaiting an answer. As far as Tisha B'Av 5772 (today) is concerned, it should be known that the police have closed Temple Mount to Jews. Y.)

"Tisha B'Av will last forever," promised Kamal al-Khatib, deputy head of the Islamic Movement in Israel, to thousands of cheering Muslims at the Temple Mount a few days ago. Even the hearts of Jews far from the mountain saddened. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas mocked us in the same spirit a few months ago when he said, "Call yourself the Hebrew Socialist Republic - it is none of my business." He refused to accept Israel's Jewish identity. We, who have drifted away from Tisha B'Av and the Temple Mount, should be grateful to both of them, because sometimes a nation needs its haters to discover its real face in the mirror again.

Why deny it? Only a few of us still feel real pain over the destruction of the Temple some 2,000 years ago. Fewer still are attached to the Temple of yore. Tisha B'Av is filled with events organized by Temple Mount movements and groups interested in negotiations and public discourse, but the general public is not part of all that.

It is doubtful whether legislation would help in this case. It may even be harmful when the public does not feel mere indifference to this day but alienation. Regrettably, many people ignore Tisha B'Av. They wonder what mourning the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple has to do with them, who are living in a sovereign Jewish state.

But there's another way that will put not only the loss of the Temple and its existence at the center of this day, but mainly the loss of Jewish sovereignty and freedom and the beginning of the long exile. Were it not for that exile, in which we were banished from our land, persecuted, oppressed and murdered, our history as a nation could have been very different.

Saturday, July 28, 2012

If I understand the timing correctly, the London Olympics will begin on Friday night, July 27 - at 9:00 p.m. London time. I won't be watching it - in a few hours, the Sabbath will come to Israel. It is the 9th day of the Jewish month of Av, Tisha B'Av. This year, the mourning associated with this sad day will be pushed off to Sunday. We do not mourn on the Sabbath, not as a nation and not as an individual.

We will begin our mourning as the Sabbath leaves us. Tisha B'Av is, without doubt, the saddest day of the Jewish calendar. we have a long list of tragedies that have befallen our people on this day and each year we remember. There are those who are against remembering the Israeli athletes who were murdered 40 years ago. They want us to move on, to stop remembering. This for a people who remember the day both our Holy Temples were destroyed more than 2,000 years ago - and even more for the First Temple.

We remember each Temple; we remember each massacre. We remember the expulsion from Spain during the Spanish Inquisition that started on this day in 1492, and so much more. I won't be watching as the opening ceremonies mark the start of the Olympics, but I will remember.

I was only 11, just about 12, but there were several moments that remain clear to me - the first announcement and confusion...how could the Olympics be continuing as if nothing is happening? They're playing while the Israelis are being held at gunpoint. And then the world seemed to straighten a little and the games stopped.

Friday, July 27, 2012

White House press secretary Jim Carney refused to publicly name the capital of Israel yesterday. All he was willing to say when asked repeatedly is that the White House position on Israel’s capital hasn’t changed.

It’s a fact—not an opinion—that Jerusalem is Israel’s capital. Anyone who insists otherwise is in denial. You may wish Tel Aviv was its capital. You may even wish a united Al Quds was the capital of the Arab state of Palestine. But those things can only be true in an alternate universe or in the future. In this universe, in 2012, Israel exists and Jerusalem is its capital.

A photo from 1977 shows the plot on which the Vesertiles' house in Ganei Tal will be built. There are four barefoot children in the snapshot, with yellow sand dunes in the background. It is a desert, without a speck of green anywhere. No birds, no flies, no beetles.

In a picture of the same location from 2005 there is already a modest house surrounded by dark green grass, and hundreds of trees heavy with fruit. Many birds, flies and beetles compete for a place amidst their branches. 20 minutes after the photograph was taken, it all disappeared. The birds, the trees, the house — all of it flown away.

Shlomo Vesertile kept the magnets he had on the refrigerator, commercials to businesses that have been wiped out: an appliance repairman who also does plumbing; a plant nursery and gift shop (open on Friday!); a Torah scribe (will come to clients' homes to check their mezuzot) and many more.

The community of Gush Katif was a miracle. It grew on a strip of land where thousands of mortars fell to great clamor, yet almost without hurting a soul. A heavenly dome of iron had protected it. A place where green leaves grow out of seas of sand until it becomes a mighty agricultural center, must have a guardian angel watching over it. Such a remote location, which in a few short years fills up with schools and places of Torah study, with cowsheds and kindergartens and factories, cannot develop without divine supervision.

Gush Katif's quick uprooting had also defied logic. Human language does not possess the ability to describe the destruction of 26 communities within five days.

The Palestinian Authority is against the moment of silence at the Olympics to commemorate the Israeli athletes murdered at the Munich Olympics in 1972. According to the headline in the official PA daily, “Sports are meant for peace, not for racism.”

According to Jibril Rajoub, President of the Palestinian Olympic Committee:

“Sports are meant for peace, not for racism… Sports are a bridge to love, interconnection, and spreading of peace among nations; it must not be a cause of division and spreading of racism between them [nations].”

[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, July 25, 2012]

These words appeared in a letter sent by Rajoub to the President of the International Olympic Committee, Jacques Rogge. The letter ”expressed appreciation for [Rogge's] position, who opposed the Israeli position, which demanded a moment’s silence at the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in London.”

The PA daily does not refer to the murder of the Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics in 1972 as terror. In the article about Rajoub’s letter, the killing of the athletes is referred to as “the Munich Operation, which took place during the Munich Olympics in 1972.”

The article continues with examples of Palestinian officials — including President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad — honoring and praising the planners of the Munich massacre, Amin al-Hindi and Muhammad Daoud Oudeh (Abu Daoud).

When Jordan's Arab Legion seized half of Jerusalem, ethnically cleansed its Jewish population and annexed the city-- the only entity to recognize the annexation was the United Kingdom which had provided the officers and the training that made the conquest possible. Officers like Colonel Bill Newman, Major Geoffrey Lockett and Major Bob Slade, under Glubb Pasha, better known as General John Bagot Glubb, whose son later converted to Islam, invaded Jerusalem and used the Muslim forces under their command to make the partition and ethnic cleansing of Jerusalem possible.

Since then the annexation and ethnic cleansing has become an international mandate. It would be absolutely inconceivable for the international community to denounce an ethnically cleansed group which survived attempted genocide for moving back into a city where they had lived. It is, however, standard policy at the State Department and the Foreign Office to denounce Jews living in those parts of Jerusalem that had been ethnically cleansed by Muslims, as "settlers" living in "settlements", and describe them as an "obstruction to peace." Peace being the state of affairs that sets in when an ethnic cleansing goes unchallenged.

Describing Jewish homes in Jerusalem, one of the world's oldest cities, a city that all three religions in the region associate with Jews and Jewish history, as "settlements" is a triumph of distorted language that Orwell would have to dip his hat to. How does one have "settlements" in a city older than London or Washington D.C.? To understand that you would have to ask London and Washington D.C. where the diplomats insist that one more round of Israeli compromises will bring peace to the region.

How does one have "settlements" in a city older than London or Washington D.C.? To understand that you would have to ask London and Washington D.C.

The Israeli Police are very meticulous about Jews praying on the Temple Mount, site of the First and Second Temples. The holiest place in the world for Jews, they are forbidden to pray there.

Although the Temples were run by cohanim (priests), anyone could bring a sacrifice. It was in fact the first universal religious site in history. The center of Jewish worship, it was inclusive.

Strictly enforced by scores of guards employed by the Wakf (Muslim Authorities) who maintain surveillance of visitors, their discriminatory policy is enabled and assisted by Israeli (Arab) policemen. Non-Muslim religious items are prohibited by the Wakf, including Bibles and prayer books, and visiting hours are restricted.

According to UNESCO, Jordan is the legitimate authority in charge of maintaining and protecting the site and is the custodian of Muslim and Christian holy sites in Jerusalem.

Because The Temple and the Holy of Holies, an inner sanctum into which only the High Priest was permitted and only on Yom Kippur, was situated on the Temple Mount many Orthodox rabbis forbid visits by Jews. The Temple, however, was located in the middle of the plaza and the southern third of the plaza was added during the Herodian period.

The exact site of the Temple, moreover, is unclear. Most believe it was in the area of the golden-domed "Shrine of the Rock," built by Muslims about 1,300 years ago, close to the spot where 4,000 years ago Abraham bought Isaac. A Crusader church was built there until reconquered and rebuilt by Muslim armies. Another opinion places the Temples slightly to the north.

Accessible to non-Muslims only during morning and early afternoon hours, except Fridays and Moslem holidays, to avoid interfering with Moslem prayers, Jews who intend to visit are required by halacha (Jewish law) to immerse in a mikve (ritual bath), avoid wearing leather shoes and walk along the periphery of the plaza area.

My visit to the Temple Mount was prompted by protests of prominent archeologists over destruction of the site ("renovations") carried out by the Wakf and recent discoveries, by chance, of First Temple period artifacts there.

More than a decade ago the entire southern portion of the Temple Mount, where the al-Aksa mosque is located was excavated by the Wakf and turned into one of the largest mosques in the Middle East. It can accommodate 10,000 people. In the process, however, 15,000 tons of valuable archeological material were dumped as garbage. Archeologists and volunteers sifting through the debris found thousands of important artifacts, some from the First and Second Temple periods – and their task is far from completed. How could Israeli authorities allow this travesty to happen?

There was a bizarre scene during today’s White House briefing, when White House Press Secretary Jay Carney flat-out refused to say whether the capital of Israel was Jerusalem or Tel Aviv, despite repeated questioning from multiple reporters. The Washington Examiner’s Joel Gehrke reports:

Carney was caught flat-footed when asked which city is Israel’s capital. “I haven’t had that question in awhile,” he said after some hesitation. “Our position has not changed. You know our position.” The reporter said she didn’t know, but Carney moved on to another question.

Thursday, July 26, 2012

Sometimes the PA comes out with a statement that is so ludicrous that the impulse is to simply laugh at it. This is the case with the statement made by Jibril Rajoub, President of the Palestinian Olympic Committee, in a letter sent to President of the International Olympic Committee, Jacques Rogge, thanking him for his stand in refusing a moment of silence for the Israeli Olympic athletes massacred 40 years ago in Munich:

"Sports are a bridge to love, interconnection, and spreading of peace among nations; it must not be a cause of division and spreading of racism between them."

You know why Rajoub considers a memorial to the Israeli athletes to be a "cause of division"? Because it's better not to remind anyone that Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, had a direct connection to the Munich massacre. According to Mohammed Daoud Oudeh, a.k.a. Abu Daoud, mastermind of that attack, not only did Abbas raise the funds for it, he also kissed him and wished him luck when he set out on his mission.

Sober and measured assessments see the terrorist fingerprints of Iran's government all over the lethal attack by a human bomb on a busload of Israeli tourists at Burgas airport in Bulgaria on July 18. But there remains one reliable forum where doubts about Iranian culpability are the norm rather than the exception: the debating halls of the United Nations.

The speaker is His Excellency Mohammad Khazaee, the American-educated Permanent Representative of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the United Nations since 2007. The remarks below were made in a UN Security Council debate on the Middle East yesterday:

"It's amazing that just a few minutes after the terrorist attack, Israeli officials announced that Iran was behind it... We have never and will not engage in such a despicable attempt on ... innocent people... Such terrorist operation could only be planned and carried out by the same regime whose short history is full of state terrorism operations and assassinations aimed implicating others for narrow political gains... I could provide... many examples showing that this regime killed its own citizens and innocent Jewish people during the last couple of decades." [Source]

WHATEVER word you use to describe Israel’s 1967 acquisition of Judea and Samaria — commonly referred to as the West Bank in these pages — will not change the historical facts. Arabs called for Israel’s annihilation in 1967, and Israel legitimately seized the disputed territories of Judea and Samaria in self-defense. Israel’s moral claim to these territories, and the right of Israelis to call them home today, is therefore unassailable. Giving up this land in the name of a hallowed two-state solution would mean rewarding those who’ve historically sought to destroy Israel, a manifestly immoral outcome.

Of course, just because a policy is morally justified doesn’t mean it’s wise. However, our four-decade-long settlement endeavor is both. The insertion of an independent Palestinian state between Israel and Jordan would be a recipe for disaster.

The influx of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees from Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and elsewhere would convert the new state into a hotbed of extremism. And any peace agreement would collapse the moment Hamas inevitably took power by ballot or by gun. Israel would then be forced to recapture the area, only to find a much larger Arab population living there.

Moreover, the Palestinians have repeatedly refused to implement a negotiated two-state solution. The American government and its European allies should abandon this failed formula once and for all and accept that the Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria are not going anywhere.

On the contrary, we aim to expand the existing Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria, and create new ones. This is not — as it is often portrayed — a theological adventure but is rather a combination of inalienable rights and realpolitik.

In recent months, Israelis were targeted in terrorist attacks and attempted attacks in India, Azerbaijan, Thailand, Kenya, Turkey and, most recently, in Cyprus. Iran and Hezbollah were responsible for each and every one of these acts. This is just one part of a bigger picture. Iran and Hezbollah's most recent terrorist plots span five continents and at least 24 countries.

It should be clear to everyone in this hall that these horrific events are not isolated. A clear line of terror runs from the bombing in Argentina to the attack in Bulgaria. It begins and ends in Iran.

Last week, in the most unlikely of places, I came face to face with the power of Jewish unity. It was well after midnight when the convoy of heavily-guarded Israeli cars and buses began the short drive through the deserted streets of Shechem (Nablus).

Posted along the way were young men in IDF uniforms, keeping a watchful eye on the hundreds of Jews who were braving the late hour and our hostile neighbors to visit an ancient Jewish holy site in the heart of Palestinian-controlled territory.

For years, I had wanted to visit Joseph's Tomb, the burial place of one of our greatest Biblical forbears and one of Israel's premier sites of religious, historical and archaeological significance. Indeed, the late Dr. Zvi Ilan, one of Israel's foremost archeologists, described Joseph's Tomb as "one of the tombs whose location is known with the utmost degree of certainty and is based on continuous documentation since Biblical times" (Tombs of the Righteous in the Land of Israel, p. 365).

According to the Book of Joshua (24:32), "The bones of Joseph which the Children of Israel brought up from Egypt were buried in Shechem in the portion of the field that had been purchased by Jacob." Ancient rabbinic texts such as the Midrash mention the site, as did the early Church historian Eusebius of Caesarea, who visited it nearly 1,700 years ago. Arab geographers, medieval Jewish pilgrims, Samaritan historians and even 19th-century British cartographers all concur regarding Joseph's Tomb and its location.

But ever since Israel ignominiously abandoned the site under a hail of Palestinian gunfire on October 7, 2000, visiting it has become a logistical challenge.

Currently, Israelis are allowed access to the tomb only once a month in the wee hours of the night and under tight IDF supervision.

BASIC PRINCIPLES such as freedom of worship and assembly are tossed aside, with the result being that a total of only about 1,200 Jews are able to visit the tomb in the one night per month that is made available.

That may sound like a lot, but the demand is far greater. During my visit, I noticed how the cellphones of the organizers did not stop ringing, as they were forced to contend with people who were pleading to be granted a space on one of the buses so they could visit the Tomb. Nearly all had to be turned away.

Below is David Pakter's ("Reuters1945") posted response and remarks to Reuters News in their comment section. Our thanks once again to David for sharing and making this available to our readers.

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Iran, as well as numerous other State actors, as well as numerous non-State actors, have repeatedly called for the final destruction of the State of Israel. In addition, the Constitutions of many of the above explicitly make clear the intention of the above parties to work tirelessly and continuously to achieve Israel's removal from the map of the Middle East.

Israel, in glaring contrast to the actions and endless threats of the above referenced parties, has never called for the destruction of those same parties or questioned their right to exist. On the contrary the State of Israel wishes only "to live and let live".

Given the above status quo, in which Israel's confirmed enemies have sworn repeatedly they will never waver in their stated goal/s to destroy the State of Israel, which they have attempted but failed to achieve, during numerous wars in the past- no one should be surprised that Israel would, and certainly should, take any and all threats to its survival, most seriously.

Aaron David Miller is no ‘Zionist ideologue’ (a phrase that he himself has used pejoratively). He is not a fan of Jewish settlements east of the Green Line, and he has said that

Palestinians deserve an independent state living in peace and security alongside Israel. They’ve suffered enough; their cause is just and compelling.

He recently wrote this about the Levy Commission report, which concluded that Jews have a right to live in Judea and Samaria:

Israeli settlement activity continues unabated. In fact, in a truly bizarre and tortuous bit of twisted logic, a recent report by a committee created by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu actually recommended sanctioning the Israeli activity.

My regular readers know that I applauded the Levy report as a breath of fresh air which could finally bring the government of Israel out of the ghetto it voluntarily created when it ceded its legitimate rights and adopted its enemies’ language of ‘occupation’.

And while I think that Palestinian Arabs have certainly suffered, I also think that the “Palestinian Cause” is no more or less than a racist war against Jewish self-determination — and that the agent of Palestinian suffering has not been Israel, but rather the truly awful Arab leadership.

So Miller and I are not at all on the same page. On the other hand, he has worked for six American Secretaries of State as an adviser on Israeli-Arab negotiations, and has written four books and countless articles on the Mideast. The least we can do is listen to what he says.

Competition in the London Olympic Games begins today although the opening ceremony will take place on Friday, July 27. As of this writing, the International Olympic Committee has not agreed to a moment of silence to memorialize the murder of eleven Israeli athletes by Palestinian terrorists at the 1972 Munich Olympics.

Wednesday, July 25, 2012

The 2012 Olympic Games get underway in London in two days and three hours [check it here]. An online petition calling for sixty seconds of silence at the opening ceremony in memory of the eleven Israeli Olympians murdered in the Munich Olympic village exactly forty years ago by Palestinian Arabs has gotten more than 107,000 signatures. But it has failed to move the Olympic games organizers.

The families of the Munich 11 have tried for four long and lonely decades to obtain appropriate and respectful recognition of the Munich massacre from the International Olympic Committee.

"We feel that the Opening Ceremony is an atmosphere that is not fit to remember such a tragic incident," Jacques Rogge, president of the International Olympic Committee, said Saturday. [Source: CNN]

How did the widows object to the objection? Determinedly, and with admirable dignity.

“If you believe that the 11 murdered athletes must be mentioned, stand for a spontaneous minute when the IOC president begins to speak,” said Ilana Romano, wife of Yossef Romano, a weightlifter who was murdered in the 1972 attack. The media, she said, should follow the lead of NBC sportscaster Bob Costas [it's explained here], who has pledged to hold his own on-air minute of silence. “Silence your microphones for a minute in memory of our loved ones and to condemn terrorism,” she said... The IOC, led by president Jacques Rogge, has steadfastly refused [the request for a minute of respectful silence]... [The widows behind the petition] were in London to present the petition to Rogge in a last-ditch attempt to get him to agree. They were due to meet on Wednesday night, after Rogge postponed a Tuesday meeting. [Source: Times of Israel]

At the Pittsburgh General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) earlier this month, a motion to adopt a boycott of three companies for doing business with Israel was hotly debated and narrowly defeated. At this Christian gathering, a group of “young Jewish activists” provided important “testimony” supporting the motion to isolate and demonize Israel.

These were the “Jew-washers” – very visible actors in many such political attacks on Israel, particularly in Christian frameworks. They are influential beyond their actual numbers, providing a convenient means for cleansing such actions from the stains of double standards, demonization and sometimes anti-Semitism against the Jewish state of Israel, and even Judaism itself.

According to one media report from Pittsburgh, “These activists were mostly affiliated with Jewish Voice for Peace, a small but vocal left-wing advocacy coalition that many describe as a ‘fringe’ group… Commissioners said their personal testimony helped undercut prevailing rhetoric on the mainstream Jewish perspective.”

In fact, Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) is far from the Jewish mainstream. It is a fringe of a fringe – a small anti-Zionist group, whose finances are unclear, but are almost always found at events where Jew-washing is used, particularly when boycott, divestment and sanctions campaigns (BDS) are at stake. Their motivations, like their financing, are unclear and irrelevant – the fact that they provide a useful cover for non-Jews to justify gratuitous Israel-bashing is what counts.

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About Me

I visited Hevron in November 2000 after the outbreak of the Rosh Hashanah War to see what could be done to assist in the face of the growing daily attacks on the community. After returning to work for the community in the summer of 2001, a bond and a love was forged that grows to this day. My wife Melody and I merited to be married at Ma'arat HaMachpela and now host visitors from throughout the world every Shabbat as well as during the week. Our goal, "Time to come Home!"